


My Eleena

by Kaggath



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: A Happy Ending For Once, Art, Comfort, F/M, SWTOR, Sith, The old Republic - Freeform, Twi'lek, well sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 22:38:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14861612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaggath/pseuds/Kaggath
Summary: Inspired by art: The Lovers, 1928-René Magritte





	My Eleena

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by art: The Lovers, 1928-René Magritte

Eleena draped herself lavishly over the couch as she soaked herself in the languid drip of empty time. Malgus did not bother with plush cushioning, but compared to the bustle and strain of daily life with the Sith, it was a downy throne. A moment of stillness in her chaotic life to be treasured.

Down time was rare, and Eleena made use of it by doing absolutely nothing. Stretching her tired body, she felt her muscles sigh. Her eyelids felt heavy. The light was dim, and the air was warm. Most importantly, she was safely deep within Veradun’s home.

With Veradun busy, and no directions given to her, Eleena might have tidied the estate were it lived in. They were always so busy…everything left untouched, empty, barren. Let him play his war games. Eleena was tired. Pouring her consciousness into rest, what could be so luxurious as a nap?  
Pulling in a deep breath as she sunk lower and lower into sleep, Eleena felt herself smiling.

 

Sighing quietly as she roused, Eleena dizzily fluttered her eyes open. She couldn’t tell how long she slept, but the warmth of the sofa and her reluctant joints told her she’d been in the same position for quite some time. Sitting so still she almost didn’t notice him in the curtain of shadow was Veradun. His intense, golden eyes studied her.

In his hands he held a familiar book. Eleena saw him using it often, but never asked about it. Usually it came out during key exchanges, and she assumed it was a ledger or perhaps some sort of personal schedule. On the floor next to him were discarded pages, violently crumpled or ripped.

“Beloved, you have returned,” Eleena murmured as she stretched, yawning, and slipped off of the couch. Veradun said nothing, gathering the sheets as she approached him. 

“In three days we will depart,” he finally said, stuffing the ripped pages back into his book. Interesting…

Eleena did not ask to where. It did not matter. She went where she was instructed, doing as she was told. This was not new. Veradun left the room, taking his mysterious book with him. By the sheer number of discarded pages, he must have lost count. As space dampened his stomping boots to nothing, Eleena plucked a sheet that slipped under the table, only the tip of a corner peeking out like the sliver of a moon obscured by its planet.

Delicately turning the page over, she saw not an account of purchases, or a timetable. A queenly woman gazed into her, lifelike, as if the markings on the paper had their own heartbeat. The woman wore plain clothes, but there was richness to her nonetheless in the way she held herself. She had intelligent eyes, and an almost teasing smile. She smiled to the viewer like they shared a wonderful secret, and everyone else was deprived of whatever special thing they shared.

What struck Eleena most about the woman were the full, shapely lekku framing her face like a priceless painting. She lounged in a position similar to how Eleena had been sleeping…

Was Eleena seeing herself through Veradun’s eyes? Is this how he saw her? The woman in the drawing leaned into her, interested, beckoning, but under her lifted chin one of her lekku obscured her throat. Eleena reached up, running her fingertips across her puckered scar.

Tucking the paper away, Eleena had questions. 

Leaning into their quarters as Veradun hid his book away, Eleena tried to subtly search for where the he could have discarded the rest.

“To where will we be going, Veradun?” she asked. It seemed an acceptable lead in to her true inquiry. 

“We will be rejoining the war effort. I would have us there already, but there has been a…delay.” His mind was far off. A delay, but one that prevents him from moving. Eleena noted this, for later. For now, she had her own mission.

“What would you have me do in the meantime?” 

“It’s late. I will be retiring soon. Tomorrow our work begins.”

“What was it you were working on? Is it something I may help with?” Eleena pressed.

“It was nothing. Worry not of it.” 

So he was going to pretend it hadn’t happened at all. Should she risk the gambit of revealing she knew of his hidden talent? Surely it couldn’t be so awful she knew…but there were times when Veradun could be volatile for unexpected reasons.

He turned to her as if to say something else, but something drew his gaze away from her eyes. Reaching for her hand Veradun spread her palm open like a flower. Dark smudges Eleena hadn’t noticed spread like a shadow reaching towards her.

“I see,” Veradun said as he traced his finger across her hand. Here and there more splotches of darkness unraveled from the pitch of his glove. 

“I’ll be taking that back.” Heat didn’t reach his voice, but there was no room for denial, or refusal. Eleena searched his expression for answers.  
Indifferent neutrality swept across his face like a plague as he again studied her. A decision seemed to resolve itself behind his eyes.

“To see with the Force is to see with ultimate clarity,” he began as if to lecture her. “With the Force, I can see in an instant every detail of a battlefield. But seeing it alone is not enough.”

Eleena did not see what this had to do with her, or the drawing, but she didn’t dare interrupt.

“Through the perfect precision of the Force,” Malgus continued, unlocking one of many drawers, “My victory is assured.” 

Pulling a portfolio from its secret tomb, he held out his hand. Eleena returned his drawing, confused, still seeking answers. Slipping the forbidden sketch into the shadows of his hidden collection, Malgus pulled out several crisp pages from another portion of the portfolio.

“You may be familiar with these,” he said, laying them out for her. She was. Eleena recognized several locations and battles, beings and landmarks. In one, Eleena saw herself in profile, twin blasters firing on Republic troops. She remembered that battle. She remembered that moment. It was at a depot, not long ago, mere moments before Malgus saved her from a would-be fatal explosion.

Another, on Dromomund Kaas. Detailed vehicles and distant plant life seemed so real Eleena could almost hear the constant rain of the torrential planet. Again, she found herself. This time from behind as she looked into the sky, split by a massive, splintering bolt of lightning.

In every drawing Eleena was there, but her face was in some way obscured. Veradun let her observe in silence, absorbing it. Eleena was surprised, honestly, that Malgus truly recalled such detail considering how linear he seemed in combat. Straightforward, single minded. It was oddly comforting to know even when it seemed he was not, he was watching over her.

His words and the drawings he shared didn’t match what she had found, though. The scene was not his home, the clothes were not her own. Everything she saw before her fell strictly in line with reality, no matter how gruesome. 

She had come this far. 

“Why do you hide the others from me, love?” she asked sadly. If Eleena was honest with herself, she was sad to only just be finding out about this hidden talent in the first place. 

“Those are idle scribblings. Nothing of importance. Nothing worth bothering to waste the time it would take.”

Stung, Eleena looked away to hide the hurt on her face. 

“But, if it would please you…” reluctance thickened his words. Blinking hard, Eleena turned back towards him.

From yet another locked drawer, a larger portfolio. Masterpieces that put other Sith’s collections to shame. 

The silence between Eleena and Veradun filled with words that outnumbered the stars, written in the language of art. Misty sunrises in purples and blues and ethereal silver, starscapes and far off planets with the blue kiss of an atmospheric halo, the cutting vibroblades of starlines surreally tearing through a landscape. Was this truly the inside of his mind when not dominated by worship to the Empire?

Finally Eleena worked through the images she had been granted. The final piece broke her heart.

The focus was some fallen hero. His face was obscured by thick, black cloth so dark it seemed to melt into the spacescape. Even without seeing his face Eleena could tell he was in terrible, terrible pain. Another figure, both equal and opposite, his antithesis. The white cloth that obscured her burned with a brightness shaming the stars, and yet seeming so perfectly in place with the absolute nothingness of her counterpart.

It seemed to be in motion, and yet as it hung stationary before her, the lovers lived in eternal unfulfilled anticipation. Forever yearning, endlessly desperate to be together and yet barred by the constraints of which the artist forced upon them. 

Eleena didn’t realize she was crying until Veradun took the piece from her. Casting it aside, he pulled her into his arms, clutching her tightly to him as she struggled to regain composure. Pulling back, Veradun traced a thumb wetly across her cheek.

An idea put forth tentative roots.

“Bring your book,” she pleaded on a whisper. Perhaps stirred by the intimate moment, Veradun did as she wished. Opening it far into the middle, away from where he’d been working previously, she pointed to the page.

“Draw this moment into the future?” Eleena requested.

Eleena didn’t know when he would make his way to the page, but she made a silent wish that by the time he did, he would let the lovers cast away their cloth and truly see each other.

Watching him as he drew, Eleena wondered how the moment looked to him. As he finished she came to see the fruits of his effort. All he drew was her, unobscured and smiling warmly to him with a small, simple caption:

My Eleena


End file.
